


Potatowned

by JacquelineHyde



Series: Fire Emblem! Retail! [3]
Category: Fire Emblem Heroes
Genre: M/M, Modern AU, and sharena gets a lot of amusement from his pain, and zacharias is stuck being the responsible one, in which alfonse is a grumpy little shit, specifically grocery store au, yup it's more of that nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-24 22:10:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16184186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JacquelineHyde/pseuds/JacquelineHyde
Summary: By the time Alfonse fully realizes the sack of potatoes is absolutely going to hit him, he's flat on his back on the floor of the receiving bay, disoriented and winded, with fifty-five pounds of Yukon Golds on his face.'So this is how it feels to be the guy at the start of an infomercial.'





	Potatowned

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, this is a series now! I really wanted the second one to be the one I'm working on, about poor Zacharias learning that everyone in his new place of work is bonkers, but I couldn't make it come together, so I'm going to come back to that one. So instead of something that makes chronological sense, have this dumb story that exists entirely so I could use a dumb title I've been wanting to use ever since I got hit in the face with a box of burritos at work. Burritowned, baby!

By the time Alfonse fully realizes the sack of potatoes is absolutely going to hit him, he's flat on his back on the floor of the receiving bay, disoriented and winded, with fifty-five pounds of Yukon Golds on his face.

 _So this is how it feels to be the guy at the start of an infomercial,_ he thinks hazily as the potatoes are hefted away and Zacharias eases him into a sitting position with gentle hands.

“Jesus Christ, Alfonse, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I think so,” he replies thickly, grimacing at the wet warmth trickling down his lip. “Oh, _gross_.”

“What happened?” Zacharias demands, grabbing the roll of paper towel from the discards rack.

“The potatoes slid off the top of the pallet,” he explains. No need to mention the rather substantial role he had played in such an occurrence.

Zacharias makes a noise of disgust.

“What the hell kind of idiots do they have working in the warehouse?” he seethes, tearing off a fresh length as the first wad becomes quickly drenched with blood. “How hard is it to build a pallet that won't injure someone the second the plastic comes off?”

Alfonse squirms guiltily. It's tempting to let the poor warehouse guys take the blame for this one, both to preserve his own credibility, and because it's actually kind of nice to see his sweet, gorgeous, amazing co-worker getting angry on his behalf. But in the end, his conscience wins out.

“Well...it _may_ have been more my fault than not.”

Zacharias eyes him suspiciously.

“How so?”

“I...may have tried to use a broom to knock the potatoes off the pallet.”

“Oh, Alfonse,” Zacharias sighs, rubbing his back as he hacks up a glob of blood into the paper towel.

“I couldn't reach them!” he protests once he can breathe again.

“I was in the cooler, twenty feet away. You could have called me. Or barring that, they have these things called step ladders. There are three in my line of vision at this very moment.”

“I was in a hurry! Anna's going to be in soon, and we still have holes! Anyway, I do this all the time, and nothing's ever hit me in the face before.”

“That's exactly what all those people in the workplace safety videos said, right before something hit them in the face,” Zacharias points out, and Alfonse gives a sulky shrug, because honestly, he can't really argue with that. He can practically hear the narrator outlining all of his various safety infractions, and the precautions that he could have taken to prevent the incident. “Okay, let's get you upstairs.”

Between the sudden change in altitude as Zach helps him to his feet, and the blood loss as his nosebleed shows no sign of slowing, Alfonse remembers little of that trip upstairs. They must have encountered Sharena at some point, because there she is, hovering in the doorway of the perishables office as Zacharias settles him carefully into the spinny office chair in front of the meat desk.

“So, Zacharoni,” she begins, arms crossed and eyes narrowed. “Why does it look like you're trying to chloroform and subdue my brother?”

Entirely focused on the task of adding another dry wad of paper towel to the grapefruit-sized wad Alfonse already has plastered to his face, Zacharias allows himself a huff of annoyance.

“Sharena, when I asked you to stop calling me Hot Banana Guy all the time, it wasn't an invitation to call me something even stupider.”

“Also, _chloroform_?” Alfonse sighs. “No more True Crime Network for you, sis.”

“Well, it was either that, or you did something dumb and injured yourself.” Sharena shrugs, and then grimaces as Alfonse tosses a sodden mess of paper towel into the wastebasket and tries to replace it with a fresh strip there before his shirt becomes a lost cause from the stains. “Okay, judging by the amount of blood happening here, that seems a lot more likely. Sorry, Zach. So, what happened?”

“Nothing!” Alfonse yelps, waving frantically, before Zacharias can say anything. “Just, you know, doing dumb things and injuring myself!”

“A bag of potatoes slid off of the pallet and hit him in the face,” Zacharias explains grimly. “Hey, could you stay with him while I go find someone with a first aid certificate to take a look and make sure nothing's broken?”

“Zach, nothing is broken!” Alfonse insists, trying to stand, and immediately falling dizzily back into his chair, the jarring landing doing absolutely nothing good for his already throbbing face. “Do you always overreact like this to minor injuries?”

Sharena falls into a stunned silence as Zacharias scoffs that, of course, his nose is only a _little_ crooked, and only gushing a _little_ uncontrollably, and he's only wheezing for breath a  _little_ desperately, all totally minor.

“A bag of potatoes hit you in the face?” she finally manages.

“Yeah,” Alfonse sighs wetly.

“So basically,” Sharena begins with a poorly-hidden grin.

“Sharena, stop!” he orders, immediately aware of exactly where this is going.

“What you're saying is...”

“Don't say it!” he pleads as Zacharias looks, bewildered, from sibling to sibling.

“You got potatowned!”

“Goddammit, Sharena!”

“Oh my God, you got potatowned! Hey, Xander!” she calls as the meat manager makes a beeline for the fax machine, lost in his own thoughts. “Alfonse just got potatowned!”

“Great, keep up the good work, Alfonse,” Xander mumbles absently, sifting through the pile of received faxes on his way out of the office. At the doorway, he stops short and stares at the group, perplexed. “Wait, what?”

“He got hit by a bag of potatoes,” Zacharias explains again, and Xander makes a sympathetic noise, although Alfonse is pretty sure he's trying not to laugh. “He keeps insisting he's fine, but he hasn't stopped bleeding in twenty minutes, he's obviously having trouble breathing, and I think he needs to go to a Medicenter in case something is broken.”

Sharena shakes her head with a conflicted little whine.

“You know, on one hand, I feel really guilty laughing about this. But on the other hand, _potatowned_!”

“Oh my God, I'm not leaving work!” Alfonse insists. “The bleeding will stop on its own, and I only have trouble breathing when there's half a roll of paper towel up my nose! I just need some Advil and a cup of coffee, and I'll be _fine_.”

If Xander has any difficulty comprehending Alfonse's slightly garbled speech, he shows no sign of it, simply setting down his pile of papers, and turning Alfonse to face him by the back of his chair.

“Okay, let's take a look.” He prods carefully at the slightly slower trickle of blood and the rapidly forming bruising, and Alfonse nearly vibrates with the effort not to pull away or yelp at the shocks of pain that zip through his entire head each time Xander prods at a particularly sore spot. Which is most of them. Ow. “Hmm. Okay.”

“I'm okay? Great! I'm going to see if Kiran will give me me a new shirt and apron, since mine kind of look like I transferred to the meat department and then rolled around in a pile of steaks. Zach, don't worry about my potato-and-blood mess, I'll clean it up when I get back downstairs.”

“Are you _serious_?” Zacharias mutters as Alfonse makes a wobbly break for the door.

As he passes, Xander grabs the back of his apron, effectively halting his escape.

“Hold on, we are definitely taking you to get checked out, and the next time you come in, you'll need to fill out an incident report, just in case your condition worsens over the next couple of days.”

“Ooh! Just write _potatowned_ where it asks you to describe the incident!” Sharena suggests excitedly.

“Fuck my life!” Alfonse wails.

“Just let me call down to my department, and I'll run you over.” Quickly wiping his hands, Xander picks up the phone. “Hey, Leo. Do you mind taking charge of the department for a while? I need to take Alfonse to a Medicenter.” A pause. “Alfonse. The little, quiet, blue one.” Another pause. “The produce not-manager.” Another. “Thanks, Leo.” Another, longer pause. “No, you can't rule over the department with an iron fist and make insubordination punishable by death, Leo, what the hell? ...Okay...okay. See you in a couple hours. Just...try not to go mad with power, okay?”

“I don't _want_ to go to the Medicenter,” Alfonse laments quietly to Zacharias, who laughs softly and pats his head. “I don't have _time_ for this.”

“It's for the best. Just be thankful we have management who care enough to insist, instead of writing you up for slacking off as you lay unconscious in a pool of your own blood.”

Alfonse stares, rather horrified.

“Okay, where the hell did you work before this?”

“Alfonse, who else do you have in produce today?” Xander asks briskly before Zacharias can reply with more than an uneasy shrug and a faint shudder.

“Zach until three-thirty, and Dave four to ten,” Alfonse replies, rubbing his eyes miserably. “I'm supposed to be here until seven. Anna's going to _kill_ me...”

I'll stay until five-thirty if it'll help,” Zacharias offers. “Hell, I'll stay until seven, if Anna's okay with the overtime.”

“Five-thirty will be fine,” Alfonse hastens to assure him, desperately afraid that his far-too-nice co-worker and friend is plonking himself right down in the perfect position to be taken advantage of by a soulless capitalist overlord. _Soulless capitalist overlord_ , of course, being the staff's fond pet name for Anna, who was quite flattered the first time she heard it, and talked about adding it to her business card. “Thanks, Zach.”

“No problem. Just...feel better, okay?”

“You're totally going to gloat if my nose is broken, aren't you?”

Zacharias looks highly affronted, and then seems to consider this.

“Maybe a little,” he finally agrees with a tiny grin.

 

* * *

 

Three hours and some strong prescription painkillers later, Alfonse collapses into one of the chairs in the coffee bar, staring blearily at the incident report Xander fished out of Frederick's OH&S folder before checking in on the meat department to make sure no one is dead or on fire.

He's going to have to do this quickly; Sharena will be ready to leave any minute, and...well, he's pretty sure she doesn't _actually_ have the ability to teleport out of the store the moment her shifts end, but however she does it, she manages to get out of there faster than anyone else he knows. She's already going to have to wait for him to stumble his uncoordinated butt out to the car, thanks to the lovely pills that made him fall asleep and drool all over the upholstery in Xander's car on the way back to the store.

Also not his finest moment, but oh well. A little drool to match the bloodstains, right? Most of which were there when he got in the car, come to think of it, which means that Xander is either taking his work home with him, or moonlighting as a serial killer. Alfonse is leaning towards the second scenario, with how suspiciously _nice_ he's been today, hanging around a Medicenter for two hours, and then the pharmacy for another hour, just to save Alfonse a cab or bus ride back to the store. Maybe he's going to ask for help disposing of a dead body, claiming _you owe me_ , and citing today as a reason why.

“Hey. So, do I have anything to gloat about?”

He looks up, startled.

“Zach? What are you still doing here? It's almost six!”

“I had some groceries to pick up.”

“Oh..right. No, it's not broken, but they did do like five x-rays to make sure, so I guess that warrants one gloat. Use it wisely."  He fiddles nervously with his pen for a moment. “Hey, Zach?”

“Hmm?”

“I wanted to apologize, for earlier.”

“Alfonse, it's not your fault you got hurt." Before Alfonse can argue this point, Zacharias hurries on. "Okay, so I guess it's kind of your fault, but hopefully you've learned a valuable lesson about workplace safety, and you'll _ask for help_ next time.”

“No, that's not--I mean, fair point, but that's not what I meant. I was being kind of an ungrateful dick earlier while you were trying to make sure I was okay. I really do appreciate it.”

Zacharias laughs quietly.

“Don't worry, I get it. You wouldn't have been rushing in the first place if you didn't take this job way too seriously.”

“I do not!” he protests.

“Uh-huh.” Zacharias eyes him, clearly unconvinced. “That's why you had Xander bring you back to the store so you could explain the situation to Dave - which I had already done - instead of just going home to rest.”

“Well, I also have to fill out this form.”

“Which obviously couldn't have waited until tomorrow.”

“Yeah, but I'm waiting for Sharena anyway.”

“Oh, Sharena left already.”

“What?! I thought she was off at six today!”

“Yeah, she was,” Zacharias shrugs. “It's 6:02 now.”

Alfonse throws up his hands, helplessly baffled.

“How does she _do_ that? I've been sitting here, in front of the bakery for the last fifteen minutes, and I didn't see her go past.” Then, as something else occurs to him, he exclaims in outrage. “Wait, she left without me? Why would she do that? I told her I was coming back here!”

“She was worried that you'd insist on driving, pass out at the wheel, and kill you both, so she asked if I'd take you home.”

“Wow, thanks, Sharena,” Alfonse huffs. “Your faith in me means the world.”

Zacharias leans across the table to peer at his incident report.

“I don't know, _Alalalalalfonse_ , she may have a point.”

“I lost my place a few times, and just decided to start over,” Alfonse explains. “I was going to edit it after, and yeah, I guess that's probably a pretty clear indicator that I shouldn't be driving.”

Zacharias rests a hand on his shoulder.

“C'mon, let's get you home.”

“Nah, don't worry about it,” Alfonse sighs. “I want to finish this while I'm already here, and my brain doesn't want to make words right now, so it might take a while. I'll just walk home, or get a ride with Xander in his creepy murder car or something.”

With a shrug, Zacharias sets his grocery bag on the floor and slides into the other chair.

“It's fine; I'll wait.”

“You really don't have to--”

Zacharias doesn't _actually_ shove a hand over Alfonse's mouth to shut him up, but he looks like he kind of really wants to.

“It's _okay_ , Alfonse, I'll wait.”

Aware that he's being a pain in the ass again, Alfonse blushes sheepishly.

“If you're sure. Thanks.”

“No problem. We'll pick up some food on the way. I'm about ready to gnaw my own arm off, and I'm guessing you haven't eaten since lunch.”

He feels himself grimace.

“I'm not all that hungry, but thanks anyway.”

“What if I let you get coffee?”

Alfonse can practically _hear_ the ping of his eyes light up. He missed his afternoon cup, and he's pretty sure that caffeine withdrawal is partially responsible for his current headache. Y'know; along with fifty-five pounds of potatoes to the face.

"Done! Just...just nothing in the potato family, okay?”

Zacharias looks amused.

“Well, there goes my bottomless poutine idea.”

“Let's come back to that one in about a week.”

“Sounds like a plan. Now, finish your form, and let's go.”

Alfonse pouts. Right, the form. The form, which will require words. Words, which his brain will have to come up with. His brain, which currently feels like it's wrapped cotton candy.

_Provide a detailed description of the incident. Include a diagram if required._

With a soft snort that his nose immediately and deeply regrets, Alfonse imagines Frederick's expression if he were to turn in a stick figure comic strip detailing the afternoon's events.

“Okay, Sharena, you win,” he mumbles, quickly scribbling a single word after several moments of fruitlessly tapping his pen against the table.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, Frederick glances over the incident report he finds in his mailbox, and frowns, perplexed.

“Potatowned? What the hell is potatowned?”

 


End file.
